I get most of my inspiration from older records and older production styles, and that ends up rearing its head in the records that I make.

It might be a meaningless moment, but those sparks that ignite the song.... It's mystical maybe, those magic moments. And to make music for a living, to perform these songs over and over, you have to safeguard those sparks. If you can do that, they'll last a lot longer.

As a producer, I like to bring in unexpected voices, unexpected musicians, like Watt and Joey Spampinato of NRBQ.

When I started to take literature and poetry classes, I just started to get inspired by these new incredible works of art that I had never seen or heard of before. I wrote a lot of bad high-school poetry, just like pretty much everyone did, I think, at some point. For me, the inspiration never really stopped.

I do watch 'American Idol' sometimes. It's not really that pleasurable... I take that back. It is the epitome of a guilty pleasure. Sometimes there's some good singers on that show.

One of the great things about music is that it has the capability of time travel - you smell a certain smell in the room and it takes you back to your childhood. I feel like music is able to do that, and it happens to me all the time.

I love the sound of Elmore James, the sound early guitarists like him got just by using minimal means.